We

breath upon the water, and looked as if the place were his own, far and wide, and we were there by his gracious permission. It was only when he rowed among the grass and flowers, covered with cups, white and yellow, as though a feast had been prepared for his reception, that I perceived he had anything underneath to move with. then heard some low and hoarse voices, and presently came out his mate, slender and less beautiful, arranged her plumage, went down a little way and returned again, sat motionless opposite us, and seemed courting us not to hurt or disturb him. Agatha said that they had their nest there, under the bank: that their voices are not always low and hoarse that when they are about to die, they sing delightfully. I was very glad the poor creatures had many years yet to live, for they certainly had made no progress in their singing. But there are birds, perhaps, as we are; birds that will learn nothing from those they do not like."

The following are selected from far and wide:

Men, like dogs and cats, fawn upon you while you leave them on the ground: if you lift them up, they bite and scratch; and if you shew them their own features in the glass, they would fly at your throat and tear your eyes out. This between ourselves, for we must not indulge in unfavourable views of mankind. By doing so, we make bad men believe that they are no worse than others, and we teach the good that they are good in vain."

"Thus it is with writers who are to have a currency through ages. In the beginning they are confounded with most others; soon they fall into some secondary class; next, into one rather less obscure and humble; by degrees they are liberated from the dross and Iumber that hamper them, and, being once above the heads of contemporaries, rise slowly and waveringly, then regularly and erectly, then rapidly and majestically, till the vision strains and akes as it pursues them in their etherial elevation."

"I should entertain a mean opinion of myself, if all men, or the most part, praised and admired me; it would prove me to be somewhat like them. Sad and sorrowful is it, to stand near enough to people for them to see us wholly; for them to come up to us, and walk round us leisurely and idly, and pat us when they are tired and going off. That lesson which a dunce can learn at a glance, and likes mightily, must contain little, and not good. Unless it can be proved that the majority are not dunces, are not wilful, presumptuous, and precipitate, it is folly to care for popularity."

"We find the countenances of the statesmen and courtiers who lived in his age, almost without exception, mean and suspicious. The greatest men look, in their portraits, as if they were waiting for a box on the ear, lowering their heads, raising their shoulders, and half closing their eyes, for the reception of it."

Ternissa.-"O what a pleasant thing it is to walk in the green light of the vine leaves, and to breathe the sweet odour of their invisible flowers!

Epicurus-The scent of them is so delicate that it requires a sigh to inhale it; and this, being accompanied and followed by enjoyment, renders the fragrance so exquisite. Ternissa, it is this, my sweet friend, that made you remember the green light of the foliage, and think of the invisible flowers as you would of some blessing from heaven."

"Some minds require much belief-some thrive on little. Rather an exuberance of it is feminine and beautiful. It acts differently on different hearts: it troubles some, it consoles others: in the generous it is the nurse of tenderness and kindness, of heroism and self-devotion: in the ungenerous, it fosters pride, impatience of contradiction and appeal, and, like some waters, what it finds a dry stick or hollow straw, it leaves a stone."

"We may write little things well, and accumulate one upon another; but never will any be justly called a poet unless he has treated a great subject worthily. He may be the poet of the lover and of the idler, he may be the poet of green fields or gay society; but whoever is this can be no more. A throne is not built of bird's nests, nor do a thousand reeds make a trumpet.

It is time to speak of the Collected Edition, which is in two stout volumes, closely printed-too closely, either for beauty or for comfort; but in accordance with the demand for cheap literature now destroying all attempts at excellence of typography, except in costly works. First, we have the "Imaginary Conversations," already published in five volumes 8vo, to which several new dialogues have been added: amongst them those which appeared in Blackwood. The old dialogues have been revised, and some of the impertinencies of the foot notes removed.

We wish all had been removed. Above all, we wish some friend had struck out the passages in which his vanity has allowed him to talk like a school-boy of his own prowess. E.g. Having written some verses in Italian, which he inserts into a dialogue, he informs the reader that they were originally written in English, but that he found it easier to write them better in Italian. Now that he should be an accomplished Italian scholar is conceivable enough, but that he should pretend to write poetry (of all things) better in Italian than English is ridiculous. No man ever

He must be dead indeed to the graces and harmonies of our language who does not recognise a master hand in the foregoing extracts; and there are more such passages in Landor.

"

The Imaginary Conversations," though deficient in dramatic propriety and characterization, are admirable specimens of conversation. Each dialogue is really a conversation on some one subject interspersed with numerous digressions, all happily and spontaneously taken up and quitted. But this, although a merit as a work of art, has very great drawbacks in a work professing to teach. What is the consequence? Why, that the dialogues, from being discursive, fail to convey any distinct impression; and the reader, however pleased, is not instructed.

Landor, as we said, is a bookish man. He is remarkably well read. The most cursory view of the subjects treated in his " Imaginary Conversations" would suffice to show this. But his learning is like his mind, discursive, desultory. He does not bring it to bear on any one point-to effect any one purpose. He seems to us like a man who lived in a magnificent library and read over very carefully multifarious books, pencil in hand, and noting minute points, especially of grammar or expression, which notes he after

wards worked up into an Imaginary Conversation. If you look closely at Landor's criticisms, you will find that he never judges of any work; he contents himself with nibbling at some trifling detail, upon which he may hang his ostentation and his scorn. He has the true word-catching pedantry of a commentator; and all the arrogance which distinguishes the race. Nothing can be more provoking than such criticism when not undertaken for some specific purpose; accordingly he exasperates more than he impresses the reader by his display. Were it not, indeed, for the inexhaustible power of illustration, and the sustained beauty of his style, no one would ever have patience to read through a single volume of his works. But such excellencies redeem many faults.

We have done. If we have been unsparing in our blame, we have not been niggard of our praise; both are indifferent to Landor, who has that contempt of critics, which is always fostered by ill-success; but we would fain hope that this examination of a contemporary has been rightly interpreted by our readers, and that they at least have seen nothing in our remarks but an unmixed solicitude for literature. Landor is neither a friend nor an enemy; and as critics we have judged, not as partizans.

THE Westminster Confession of Faith answers this question by saying, "The Pope of Rome

But

is that Antichrist, that Man of Sin, and Son of Perdition, that exalteth himself in the Church against all that is called God," and other replies might be given, did we appeal to other authors on the subject. Nero, or some other persecuting Roman emperor, or the heretics called Docetæ, would be named by one; the Arian heresy would be quoted by another; infidelity would be announced as Antichrist by a third; Protestantism, or perhaps Luther, would be mentioned by Papists or Tractarians; and Popery would be indicated by the great majority of Protestants. without professing to derive our opinions from any who formally have discussed the question, we would attempt a reply from the simple consideration of Scripture on the one hand, and of historical facts upon the other. We at once and distinctly announce our conviction that the Papacy, with the Pope of Rome for its head and representative, is Antichrist; and we shall endeavour succinctly to submit the arguments or illustrations which we think render that irrefragably certain. Infidelity in every manifestation, and Popery in all that is peculiar to it, run into each other at many points-they unite in a clear and unequivocal antichristianism. But whoever will study Christ's religion on the one hand, and the Pope's on the other, will soon perceive that the Papacy concentrates in itself all the hostility to truth which lies scattered through other systems is by excellence THE Antichrist.

Before entering on the discussion, we would premise, that the time has fully come, and something more, when the whole truth of God concerning the great apostacy must be faithfully unfolded. No more mincing ambiguities, as if it were not the mystery of iniquity conflicting with the mystery of godliness. No more tampering with the antichristian system, as if it had lost some part of its virus, and become

a humane, a liberal, and beneficent thing. Its essential antagonism to the truth of God is as intense at this hour as it ever was. Its hatred to God's saints, and its desire for their extermination, is as unmitigated. Its hostility to the progress of science is really as unabated, as when Galileo was the occupant of a dungeon in the Inquisition. Wherever it has the power, and is not abashed or hampered by the neighbourhood of Protestantism, or necessitated to wear the mask of liberality the better to effect its objects, Popery is still as malignant and fierce as it was three centuries ago; indeed, if it were not so, it were not Popery. It boasts to be unchangeable, as its head is infallible, and in such a system, amelioration were tantamount to suicide. There is no cure for it, but solely its ceasing to be, when the Lord "shall destroy it by the brightness of his coming.'

Such being inherently and essentially the character of Popery, it becomes the duty of every friend of freedom, of religion, and of man, tỏ unmask its real character. Too long have the nations been allowed to remain its unwarned and unrescued victims, duped by its characteristic deceiveableness. The aggressions which it is making in our age, should rouse the Christians of Europe, America, and the world, to proclaim war against the Papacy. Love to papists, as well as the defence of the truth once delivered to the saints, calls for such a course, and our present purpose is to concentrate the light of Scripture and history on the antichristian system, that the rising tide of opposition to it may be swelled as far as our feeble endeavours can promote that result.

Who is Antichrist then? Without hesitation we reply, it is the Papal system, with the Pope as its head, representative, or exponent. If we confine our remarks merely to the Pope as Antichrist-if we regard him personally and alone as the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition-we no doubt comply with

the strict letter of the predictions regarding him; but then, there have been times when the Pope was imbecile and dotard-either worn out by old age, or shattered by lawless indulgence. In such cases, the nominal head was a puppet moved by the managers of the system; and it is therefore that system, and not the man, that we regard as Antichrist. It is the succession of men carrying on that plot against God and his truth, of which Satan was the author, and the Papacy is the embodiment. There is enough of unity in that marvellous confederacy, though it has lasted for a thousand years, to give consistency to all that is said in Scripture regarding "the Man of "the Man of Sin," or "the Son of Perdition,' as if he were but one; and we accordingly regard such phrases as indicating a class connected by official succession, or a system carried on by a race of men banded together by the common tie of doing all for Rome and the Papacy, and, in effect, all against the Word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever in despite of all their machinations. Were any clearer warrant needed for such an interpretation than the reason of things, we find it in Daniel ii. 38, where Nebuchadnezzar, as has been remarked by others, is put for the power of Babylon over which he presided-the king for the influence which he possessed, or the system of which he was the head.

No doubt, it was long ere this view of the predictions regarding Antichrist was adopted. Not till the eleventh or twelfth century did men arise bold or free enough, generally to proclaim that truth. Some hints before that period might be dropt-some interpretations given which implied that the system set up at Rome was the power which sought to countervail the work of Christ, and put the lies of men in the place of the truth of God. Cyril had a glimpse of the real Antichrist, and others recorded more than shrewd conjectures on the subject; but Christians arrived only by slow degrees at clear convictions on the point. As the Papacy was developed from century to century, in greater malignity, and more remorseless hostility to the truth, the saints of

God understood more and more clearly the nature of the dominant system. They felt its crushing power. They were exterminated by its hated inquisition, its crusades, and its countless forms of inflicting agony on men who would not drink from the cup of its abominations; and only as these were developed, or became gradually full blown, did the true Church of the living God distinctly discover, and boldly proclaim that Rome was antichristian, and the Pope or the Papacy, Antichrist.

It may be proper, however, before introducing proofs of this, to fix the sense which we attach to the word Antichrist. It is employed in several places in the word of God. In one, (1 John ii. 18), we read, "Little children, it is the last time; and as ye have heard that Antichrist cometh, even now there are many antichrists, whereby we know that it is the last time." "Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist which denieth the Father and the Son." In another, (1 John iv. 3), it is written, "And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of Antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come ; and even now already is it in the world"-and in another still, (2 John 7), "For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist." Now, with these texts before us, what is the meaning which we are to attach to this important word? It admits of two significations, and may imply either one opposed to Christ, or one substituted in the place of Christ. Look at the significant expression insulated and alone, and it may be understood either as describing one who was to resist the Saviour's power, and doctrine, and cause, or as designating one who was to be put for Christ himself to usurp his place and authority -to pretend, in short, that he was what Christ alone could be. pears to have been the idea of the English Reformers, who say-(Art. xxii.) that the peculiar dogmas of Rome are "fond things vainly invented, and

Such ap